'You can eat an extra cheeseburger a day'

Official guidance on how much we can eat each day has been underestimated for the last two decades, scientists have revealed.

The daily intake of calories - currently 2,000 for woman and 2,500 for men - could be increased by up to 16 per cent, the equivalent of cheeseburger or two packets of crisps.

An average adult could happily squeeze in an extra 400 calories a day and not pile on the pounds, Britain's leading nutritionists have admitted.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1227743/Its-official--eat-stay-healthy.html#ixzz0WuC35zPn

I'll bet as time goes on cigarette smoke will stop smelling good to you and just stink. Cigarette smoke, if I breathe it while I am eating, will have the effect of shutting down my taste buds. I remember waiting for a tasty steak when a table (in the smoking sections) lit up. When my steak came it might as well been a piece of cardboard for all the flavor it had. I have never heard anyone else comment on this strange phenomena, maybe I am the only one.

A home meat grinder is around $100. There are frequent sales on the kitchen gadget sites.

I have an old Oster grinder. I use the coarse grind plate. I weigh out equal amounts of beef chuck and venison. Whenever I buy a whole top sirloin, I cut off the extra fat (usually about a pound) and freeze it separately. I add 10% by weight of the venison only to the meat mixture. I usually only defrost the meat enough to cut it into chunks that fit into the grinder. I wear Nytril gloves and alternate the 2 types of meat with the fat as I grind. I toss the mixture lightly to mix it and freeze in 1-pound portions. I use quart freezer bags for the individual portions, mark them as to date and contents and then place all the packages into a large freezer bag. That helps avoid the lone package shifting to the bottom of the freezer and being left for months.

I am careful to wash hands, cutting board, grinder parts, etc quickly and, if necessary, often during the grinding if I think I may have contaminated anything.

You don't need to use venison, of course and if you can't, I would stick to all chuck and no added fat or a mixture of chuck and sirloin, again, with no added fat. If you use round, then fat should be added, IMO, as it is quite lean and if burger is too dry, it will not stick together to form a decent hamburger.

I usually try to purchase reduced price/quick sale beef, freeze it until I need it. Combining it with the venison gives us hamburger for about $1/pound and we prefer it to commercially ground beef.

I generally limit my cheeseburger intake to one a week or so. Of course, I used to be quite heavy.

My best advice is to keep a public food diary and weigh yourself often. I weigh daily, and make my food choices depending on the morning number. If I know a big splurge day is coming up such as Thanksgiving, I train ahead and give myself a couple pounds in buffer. When I quit smoking, I prepared by losing about 20 extra pounds first. But the food diary / daily weigh ins were effective enough that I didn't gain the weight back.

I have, however, found maintenance to be more challenging than the initial diet(s).

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.